Vaccines for all! People’s health over Big Pharma profits! IMA Statement
As governments across the globe roll out their COVID-19 vaccination programs, the International Migrants Alliance (IMA) calls on the authorities to ensure universal and equitable access to this lifesaving treatment and health care regardless of citizenship or legal status.
If there is one lesson to be learned from this pandemic, it is that no one is protected until everyone is protected from the virus. On the basis of this principle, there should be no debate about the need to include migrants and refugees in the vaccination plans of all governments.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, however, migrants, refugees, and other vulnerable groups are not listed as specific categories in the COVID vaccination plans that specify eligibility requirements. This leaves most migrants and refugees unsure about whether they qualify for inoculation in the country where they currently reside. Even worse, some governments have explicitly stated that they do not intend to make vaccines available to migrants and refugees in their jurisdictions, such as Colombia.
Excluding or neglecting migrants and refugees in the vaccine rollout is not only inhumane and unjust; it also undermines the public health goals of inoculation programmes. This is because migrants and refugees are among the population groups that face a higher risk of contracting and transmitting the coronavirus due to their living and working conditions. We have seen this in the COVID-19 outbreaks in dormitories in Singapore, the Maldives and the Gulf, slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants in the United States and Germany, Canadian farms, detention centres in Malaysia, and camps for displaced persons in Greece and Bangladesh.
Moreover, migrants are at the frontlines of providing care to the ill and dying. In the advanced capitalist countries, one out of five health care workers is a migrant. While the world’s population seek shelter in their homes, migrant labourers continue to toil in the fields, deliver food and essential goods, care for the children, clean the houses and maintain the infrastructure that has kept all of us alive.
Even in countries where the government has committed to provide access to vaccines for migrants and refugees, such as Germany, France, Spain, New Zealand, and South Korea, there are numerous barriers that can prevent such groups from actually availing of treatment, especially irregular or undocumented migrants. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), vaccine coverage among migrants and refugees has been lower compared to the general population even before the COVID-19 outbreak due to social discrimination, stigmatization, fear of deportation or criminalization, lack of resources, inadequate information, language and other cultural barriers, geographic location, or discriminatory eligibility requirements.
These discriminatory practices are becoming even more pronounced amidst the current pandemic because the COVID vaccines are regarded as scarce goods that governments are trying to secure for their own citizens above everyone else. This is not just “vaccine nationalism” but “vaccine imperialism” in action. The US, China, the EU and the UK have secured 78% of all available vaccine doses as of February 8, 2021, while Africa had 0.2%. Three-quarters of the world’s refugees and migrants are hosted in countries with less resources and political clout to secure enough of these vaccines for their populations. Indeed, it is estimated that a fifth of the world’s population would not have access to COVID vaccines until 2022 even if the 13 leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers produce them at maximum capacity.
This “scarcity” can be quickly alleviated if the big multinational pharmaceutical corporations are not allowed to keep their monopoly over these vaccines. If the wealthy countries agree to waive the “intellectual property rights” of these corporations over these vaccines – as demanded by developing countries at the World Trade Organisation – then more manufacturers all over the world can simultaneously produce these vaccines. This would rapidly ramp up supply and lower the costs of these vaccines for everyone’s benefit. But this is being opposed by the US, the EU and other wealthy countries to secure the monopoly profits of these multinational drug companies even as these same companies already received billions in taxpayer’s money to develop these vaccines.
The IMA calls on all migrants and refugees to demand universal and equitable access to vaccines amidst this raging pandemic. Migrants and refugees should not just be eligible to receive vaccinations, they should be included among the list or priority groups who face higher risk of infection and transmission. We call on governments to work with migrant organizations, refugee groups and non-governmental organizations to facilitate access of this vulnerable constituency to vaccination and other essential health services. We reiterate our long-standing demand for an end to the scapegoating, criminalization, brutal crackdowns, deportations, and discrimination of migrants and refugees. We also demand that governments should waive the intellectual property rights of big pharmaceutical companies over COVID vaccines and other essential medicines. The people’s health and well-being must be protected, not monopoly capitalist profits.#